1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a ceramic structure for water treatment, a water treatment apparatus and method.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Conventional photo catalyst based water treatment has been performed by inputting a photo catalyst such as TiO2, WO3, ZnO, SiC, CdS, or the like, in the form of a powder into contaminated water, irradiating ultraviolet light to the photo catalyst, and decomposing harmful organic materials using radicals, etc., generated by the photo catalyst. In addition, after the treatment, the photo catalyst is collected from the contaminated water using a membrane, and so on.
When the powdered photo catalyst is used as described above, small-scale water treatment can be effectively performed. However, when large-scale water treatment is performed, it is difficult to uniformly irradiate ultraviolet light to the entire treatment apparatus in order to absorb ultraviolet light into the photo catalyst powder dispersed in a treatment apparatus. In addition, since the light absorption rate of the photo catalyst is abruptly reduced as it gets farther away from a light source, it is also very difficult to make photo catalyst efficiency uniform and high. Further, in large-scale water treatment as described above, collection of the photo catalyst after the water treatment is almost impossible.
In order to solve these problems, a method of immersing a photo catalyst in various media to perform water treatment has been proposed.
However, in the case of conventional media being used for water treatment, it is difficult to immobilize the photo catalyst. Even when the photo catalyst is immobilized, the surface area of the photo catalyst may be remarkably reduced.
In order to solve these problems, a method of mixing precious metals or impurities such as nitrogen atoms is known. However, this method is excessively costly and complex.